The University is continuing to promote unity in its image by announcing the UR Medical Center’s new logo and new motto, “Medicine of the Highest Order,” in a multimedia campaign.
The campaign is included on local Rochester television, billboards, radio and print and will continue through June. The main concept that the Medical Center is promoting is that the institution provides “Medicine of the Highest Order.” This slogan pays tribute to the roots of the organization and emphasizes the need to integrate scientific inquiry, learning and patient care in a university-based setting in order to improve physician education, advance research opportunities and improve patient care.
The phrase “Medicine of the Highest Order” was first uttered in the 1920s at a dinner party at which Former UR President Rush Rhees, Rockefeller Foundation representatives and George Eastman were in attendance. Abraham Flexner, an educator, had developed the idea of creating research/academic-based medical facility and that Rochester provided the ideal location for a medical school of the “highest order.”
“The phrase was not engineered in some marketing department,” Associate Vice President of UR Marketing Karl Withers said. “It is authentic. It holds the inspiration on which the Medical Center is founded and it’s a legacy that we want to continue to communicate to the community, nation and world.”
The campaign commenced with local airings of five commercials during the Super Bowl to make the local community understand that the Medical Center is compromised of several prominent medical facilities, including, but not limited to, the James Wilmot Cancer Center and Golisano’s Children’s Hospital.
“We hope to increase the preference level for the Medical Center as well as promote a rise in understanding of its components,” Withers said.
The University has bought local television spots on the major networks – ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX, as well as some Time Warner affiliates such as ESPN, RNEWS, Lifetime and TNT – to reach as broad a cross-section of an audience as possible.
“We plan to air commercials during programs with high viewership,” Withers said. “We broadcasted during the ‘Grammy’s’, we have potential ‘Oscar’ spots as well as NCAA events and potentially the Olympics.”
The scope of the commercials and the media campaign in general is the seven-county Rochester area.
The commercial asks the audience what it takes to save a life or believe that amazing things could happen. It answers with three men’s visions to create a place where “medicine of the highest order” could be achieved and presented to the community. The commercial ends with the new branded logo and directs the audience to the Medical Center’s new Web site.
The new logo closely resembles the new UR logo, but with the words “Medical Center” inscribed underneath the traditional view.
The new image will gradually be incorporated into the exterior and interior of the Medical Center through signs and banners. In addition, the institution will change the name of its clinical enterprise from Strong Health (which includes Strong Memorial Hospital, the University of Rochester Medical Faculty Group, Eastman Dental Center, Visiting Nurse Service, Highland Hospital, the Highlands at Pittsford and the Highlands at Brighton) to University of Rochester Medical Center. However, Strong Memorial Hospital will keep its name. The name change is intended to reinforce the Medical Center’s academic approach to medicine.
The Medical Center recently completed a strategic planning initiative that underscored a need to clearly define the Medical Center as a nationally respected magnet for research, education, patient care and community service.
“Given that our new brand emphasizes our vital link with the University of Rochester, it is only fitting that we proudly and prominently celebrate this relationship by incorporating the core components of the University’s logo into our own,” Senior Vice President for Health Sciences and CEO of UR Medical Center Bradford Berk, M.D., Ph.D. said in a press release submitted by the University on Jan. 31. Berk outlines the path to “higher medicine” as a recipe for building strategically on our history and strengths, capturing the flow of scientific ideas to benefit patients throughout the northeastern United States. At the center of the plan are nine high-priority clinical and research programs that invest strategically in people, technology and facilities over the course of the next five years.
“The whole mission of the Medical Center is to intersect the academic-training the next generation of medical students; research – both basic and translational; clinical care, patient interactions and community outreach to provide the very best medicine we can,” Withers said.
Sahay is a member of the class of 2010.
